AMERICAN SOCIETY.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIV, Issue 9423, 20 April 1909, Page 6

AMERICAN SOCIETY.

Lady (Arthur) Paget is an Amexican by birth and early training, and for that reason, her candid criticism, which has been sought by interviewers during her stay in Sew York, excites no harsh comment. She was asked to speak her mind, freely, and, despite a big ronnd of society dinners and other entertainments devised in her honour by her hosts of American friends, which bavekeptjherjalmoat constantly busy, she has found time to oblige. . America’s enormous concentration of wealth and unexampled luxury, as she finds these things in the American Metropolis, does not appeal to her. “It is simply appalling.” she says, and she continues: “Why, when I look back to my childhood and young girlhood here, it seems it must have been in another world. 1 had no maid, I wore no jewels, and we ybnng folks revelled In skcting, sleighing, ana out-of-door divertissements such as mushrooming and nutgathering. What child in New York to-day knows each things? Wealth and luxury have abolished all the simplicity, of living, and children are little men and women now where they ware real, rollicking, natural little animals, just glorying in the hndbing cf life and things about them in my day. In society 1 should like to see the great Empire-builders, the men who with their brain and brawn have evolved this wonderful commonwealth, bat who of them is known in sooiety? What artists, literati, and people who are doing things for the progress of the nation are to be found there? It is money, money, only money. A handful of people compose sooiety, while the great numbers of doers of things, founders of great institutions, all are on the outside. I believe that my mother * was really the only woman who founded a salon in New York. In her house 1 met such men and women as I speak about. It is a joy to think of these days. THE DIVORCE HABIT.

‘The divorce habit in America is appalling. It is a terrible blight upon onx land, and it shonld be stopped by the most stringent legislation. Of coarse, any thinking person realises that the first step to be taken is to make a uniform divorce law. It is a most execrable habit, and it has brongbt on our nation the ridionle of every civilised country in*the world. People seem to rash into matrimony as they would into their morning tub, and with as little thought. Why do habitual divorces marry at all? It would be better for the State if they did not. As children regard toys, man and wife seem to look upon each other in the marriage relation in this country. Why, the idea is repulsive. “The cause of this is largely, I believe, the lack of real home life in America. People do not build for posterity, as they say of England. They do not take the Old Country pride in establishing on the very rook of ages, as it were, a family and a home. That pride iu family has caused home life in England to remain -practically intact. Americans oonld well emulate their English cousins in this, at least. “As for the suffrage question here and in England, the conditions in the two countries are so' different that the same methods cannot be applied in adjusting them. To my miad, the agitation for woman's suffrage in England is absolutely without reason, and is rightly being quelled by the thinking classes* The English suffragist is an abomination, frightfully bold'. and unwomanly in her methods, a feminine impossibility; bat here in the United States I do not see why women should not have the franchise. They are only asking for that. What the English suffragist demands is far more. Her demands reach out to the farthest limits of socialism, with its dangerous problems, which are not yet understood even by the world’s greatest thinkers. Women here are going about it in a practical .and rational way, and have done none of the atrocious aud unwomanly things practised by the English suffragists.” Lady Paget, despite her candid criticism, eagerly invited and honestly given, admits that she has enjoyed her visit to America exceedingly, and that her long residence on the British side of the Atlantic has not lessened her love for her native land. There is a lot England can learn from America, she concedes, and, all things considered, England and America ,have just about equal cause for congratulation and self-examination.